One year ago today I posted my first entry at this blogspot.com address. Since then I have posted 106 more posts which means that on average I have posted one entry every 3.4 days this year, or almost exactly twice a week! I guess that's a pretty good number; often enough, but not TOO often either... As you can see in this graph below, however, my average number of blog posts per month had, until recently, been in steady decline as I went from 20 posts in the first month, to just one post in July (granted, I was busy at summer camp and didn't have much time to post then). It's also interesting to see that there were two small spikes in December and April which coincidentally coincide with final exams...
There has been an average of 2.59 comments per blog entry with 6 entries that had significantly more comments than the others:
Poll had by far the most comments with a total of 14. This is an anomaly though because I had actually asked for people's input on which language I should start learning next. Arabic got the most votes, but alas I have started learning Portuguese and Russian instead. Go figure...
State of the Union? came in second place with a respectable 12 comments. Don't be fooled by the title of this entry, however, because these 12 comments had nothing to do with the State of the Union address, but rather with the Princess Bride character quiz which I had posted also. Just goes to show that The Princess Bride is far more important and interesting than the State of the Union address.
I HATE the wind! tied for third place with 10 comments. So it seems that in addition to The Princess Bride, people also like to talk about what the weather was like when they were young.
Insomnianiac also got 10 comments. There is no really obvious reason why this post got above-average commentary. I think maybe it's just because there were a few different points to comment on, and also because Ding was quick to point out my technological ineptitude..
Thanksgiving Weekend comes in 4th place with 9 comments, most of which were just an inside joke in Chinese with Da, Vina, and Me, and then my dad having fun with online computer translation.
Over the past year, I count 8 blog entries that talk about some of my strange dreams, about 15 posts broadly related to linguistics, and 3 posts mentioning my hatred towards wind.
Ok, for today's video we have "Fearless（霍元甲）" by my favorite Chinese (Taiwanese, actually) pop singer, Jay Chou The video has Jet Li in it because it's a song for an upcoming movie (or maybe the movie is already out) with Jet Li in it.
A random person stopped me on the sidewalk today to ask me about my bike and where I got it and such. They said they have been scoping it out the past few days on the bike rack at the UMC and that they really like it. I didn't get the impression that they meant that in a "I was scoping it out to steal it" sort of way, but rather the "I was scoping it out because it's neat" sort of way.
Corgie Man was telling some more apparent strangers about his stupid dog while he was taking it out for a dump on the Norlin quad.
Hair-eating-comment-blurting-guy was blurting out more unneccesary commentary in my semantics class (as usual, nothing new there) and some people around me started to comment about how annoying he is, thus validating my own feelings towards him. We all wish we could vote him out of the class (and perhaps into law school). I'm pretty sure that our teacher would second that vote.
For lunch I had a day-old microwaved Taco Bell Chalupa... possibly (hopefully) the culinary low point of the week...
YouTube is down for maintenance at the moment, so there's no video today...
Well, I had another sleepless night last night, but this time it was due to neither high winds, nor mini mania (Part I, II), nor fixed-gear fantasies. Nope, this time the culprit was something entirely new: experimentation with pyschoactive substances. After living in a college town like Boulder where practically everyone does it, I figured that I should try it too...
Yup, I've started drinking coffee (haha, did I trick you?). Being the novice coffee drinker I am though, I drank too much coffee too late last night and when I was finished with my work and came home to go to sleep, I was just too hopped-up on caffeine to sleep (that reminds me, cafeína - "caffeine" would be an excellent subsitution in the Gasolina o Quesadilla? song...).
Last time I wrote about having a sleepless night my dad commented that when I can't sleep I should just accept and embrace the insomnia and get up and do something while I'm feeling awake. I pondered this, but then I realized that regardless of whether I can get to sleep or not, I still have to wake up at the same time in the morning, so I should just stay in bed and keep trying to fall asleep on the off chance that it works. And actually, even though I failed at that, I still managed to get just as much accomplished laying there in bed pretending to sleep as I would have had I gotten up and tried to do some homework or something. As I was laying there, I thought up at least 5 or 6 blog posts worth of material, which means I have potentially saved myself several hours over the coming days and weeks of agonizing blog-planning time. Actually, that's not true because I will probably keep thinking of new things that I want to write about, so really I am just at a deficit now and I will have to write extra in order to keep the topics from piling up too high. So really I've just made MORE work for myself?!
I think about blog topics fairly often as I'm dozing off, but I often forget about them by the morning because I don't want to get out of bed and write anything down because it might disrupt my train of thought (that and I'm also usually tired and lazy and comfortable in bed). But last night I actually wrote stuff down so I won't forget it...
After several hours of laying in bed mentally planning out my next several blog entries (I last looked at the clock at 2:30, and I'm sure I was still awake for at least another half an hour or so...), I finally began to arrive at the final laps of the mind-race. I got this strange spacial sensation that I have always gotten from time to time for pretty much as long as I can remember; I wonder if anyone else has ever had this sort of sensation. It happens when I am somewhere around probably 60% consciousness and my body becomes really relaxed. It becomes relaxed to the point where I almost can't even feel it. Then I get this strange feeling that I am just a head, no body, and I have become very small and I am in the corner of a very large room on the floor where it meets the wall. But I can still kind of feel my limbs, and I can also still hear and listen to the real room that I am actually sleeping in, which still sounds like a normal sized room. Theses two conflicting sensations almost seem to combine to where the overall sensation is an illogical feeling of being a tiny, bodiless head that is at once both lost in, and filling up the huge room with my body. It is a really neat sensation. After laying there for a few minutes I start to become aware of how I can't really feel my body and it makes me want to move, twitch my arm, stretch my leg, just to feel that it's still there, but at the same time I want to resist the temptation to move because when I move it immediately interrupts this whole sensation even if only for a moment.
Anyway, today's video is "Risingson" by one of my all-time favorite musical groups, Massive Attack. I haven't been listening to them as much lately though because I have instead been listening almost exclusively to Muse (at least I resisted the temptation to put up another Muse video though...). Their CD Mezzanine was the only thing I listened to all day, everyday for pretty much the entire summer of 2000 while I was working at AGENCY.COM coding HTML. I chose this video because even though it's a pretty boring video, I think the song makes a pretty good soundtrack to insomnia.
It was a pretty pleasantly unproductive weekend for me. I had already got most of the hours I needed for work by Friday evening, so I decided to take a day off on Saturday. I spent the morning riding around Boulder on my bike looking for an El Chapo CD for Raissa's birthday, but apparently Boulder doesn't have a very big El Chapo following because none of the several CD places I went to had any El Chapo. So I got her a NOW: Musica Latina CD and some inappropriate postcards (warning, these postcards all contain humorous usages of the F-word and may be offensive to some people) instead of El Chapo. I also gave her some used video games, at least one of which was actually hers to begin with anyway... Aren't I just a swell brother?
Then I went with Amanda to see Little Miss Sunshine (which was pretty funny), followed by tapas at The Med. Then I went home and played video games and watched TV for the first time in many months. It's amazing how TV just sucks you in. I have pretty much weaned myself completely from television, but I ended up watching a good three hours of it anyway. At least I did find myself enjoying it less than I think I used to...
This got me thinking about vice and guilt. I wonder if addiction, guilt, and shame are exclusively human traits. Are there any other animals that get addictions? Do they feel shame or guilt for these addictions? Does this shame/guilt make them want to rid themselves of their vices? Probably not. I can't picture, let's say a dolphin, thinking to himself or saying to his friends in dolphinese, "man, I can't believe I just sat around all day doing back flips. I didn't do a single productive thing today! I need to work on that!" Or, perhaps, a dog saying to his cat friend, "man, you need to lay off the catnip. I think it is starting to really affect our relationship..." Somehow, I find these scenarios difficult to imagine...
Anyway, then on Sunday I decided to go for a long bike ride up to Dad's house. I was contemplating riding all the way from Boulder to Berthoud, but then I ended up not starting until too late. Also, I've never ridden anywhere near that far before (about 27 miles according to Google Maps), and so I thought that maybe I should try something shorter first. So I took the bus to the north end of Longmont and then rode from there. I thought it might take me an hour, but it only took me a half an hour because I'm awesome (haha). I went up there so he could give me some financial advice because Infoture has offered me participation in their 401(k) program (man, that makes me feel like an old man). So he was helping me figure out how to do that and such. Then I was thinking about maybe riding all the way back to Boulder on my bike, but (naturally) the wind was blowing in exactly the wrong direction and I would have had nothing but headwinds the whole way back. Also, because I still haven't bought a nice seat for my bike and it just has a cheap crappy one still, my boys were already going numb by the time I got to Longmont, so I took the bus back. It was a nice ride though and as soon as I get a better seat I think I would like to try doing a longer ride. I would also like to see the looks on other biker's faces as I pass them on my fixed gear, haha... I hope I make them feel inferior... (of course they will be the ones laughing when they pass me struggling up the steep hills while they glide along in their low gears...).
So overall it was a pretty nice, relaxing weekend with a good dose of some well-earned "mental health time"
Anyway... on to today's video. This video doesn't really have anything to do with what I've written about today, and I know that I already put up a Muse video not long ago, but since they are pretty much all I've been listening to lately, I guess it's okay to put up another one of their videos. This one is called "Bliss" apparently, and just like all of their songs and videos, it is awesome.
I'm at the point in me life where everyone seems to expect me to have my life all figured out. If I had a dollar for every time some has asked me about my post-graduation plans then maybe I'd have enough money so that I wouldn't have to graduate, haha (well, I probably wouldn't have that much money. Maybe if I had a thousand dollars for every time someone asked me about it...).
I wouldn't mind the friendly interrogations so much if I had a better response, but I usually just end up mumbling something along the lines of, "oh... I have no idea; maybe this, maybe that... blah blah blah..." That answer is only partially accurate though because while I don't actually have any sort of plans nailed down yet, this answer makes it sound like I haven't even started thinking about it, but I have. In fact, I think about it a lot and I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head. So here are all of the current potential post-graduation candidates (in no particular order):
I could stay in Boulder and bum around for awhile, find a place to move so I don't have to stay in Grandma's basement, and probably keep the job that I have now at Infoture. I like Boulder and I wouldn't mind staying here, but I probably won't end up staying here because I have other options that won't require paying rent.
I could try to find a "real job" somewhere, maybe move somewhere, anywhere... but I don't know how much of a rush I really want to be in to get one of those "real jobs." One potentially "real job" I'm thinking about though is to try to get a job with Google in China (Beijing, specifically). But I'm thinking that even if I decide to try to get a grown-up job, I probably won't even start applying for anything until next summer at the earliest, and maybe not even until the fall.
Currently the most likely plan is to move back to Mom's house and get a winter job up there. I might also be able to keep my current job at Infoture (since I work remotely anyway), but I think I want to get a different job that I enjoy a little more even if it pays less and won't help my resume even a little bit. This includes jobs like being a ski instructor, or possibly a shuttle driver either around Beaver Creek or maybe between the Vail area and Denver, or something along those lines. I think it sounds like fun.
There's a remote possibility that I will move into my Dad's house if he ends up getting a job that he applied for in Austraila.
I suppose I could try to find a scholarship or something to go somewhere to study Chinese (or any other language for that matter)... but that doesn't sound very likely.
If I am able to sock away enough money over the next few months, I might just take some time off to do nothing at all, maybe travel a bit. But I doubt I will really be able to save that much money, and I would just be bored after a few days with nothing to do.
Some things that I'm trying to keep in mind as I contemplate my near future:
I'd like to try to take the GRE's in the spring.
Dad and Raissa and I might try to plan a fairly long trip (like a month or two) to Europe around April or May, so I need to save up some money and keep that time slot open.
I should probably start looking for a good way to either start learning a new language to stay on track with my ten-languages-by-fifty goal, or to improve my Chinese before it gets too rusty. Maybe I'll look for a job in Brazil; or maybe Chile; or maybe some other interesting place.
I've got MINI Mania on the brain making me want to get a job, earn about $30k, and buy one of those dang minis. Other things I want to purchase include... well actually, now that I think about it, I don't really feel the need to purchase that much stuff besides the mini. Maybe some clothes. And some bicycles. And more cars. And probably a comfortable bed.
Whatever I do, I want it to be something that I'll look back on with fondness in 5, 10, or 30 years.
Is there anyway I could work a girlfriend into my life somehow? I sure would like a girlfriend...
I don't want to get trapped in a boring rut. Avoid ruts...
Maybe get an MBA? Or perhaps go to grad school for something else, like linguistics? Grad school of any kind is probably at least another year or two or three away for me though.
So that's about where I'm at. Still, that hasn't got me any closer to an intelligent answer to the, "so, whatchya doin' after graduation" question. Maybe I should just apply the Napoleon Dynamite line and answer with, "Whatever I feel like! Gosh!" Haha, yeah, that would be sweet. Really though, I am a lot more interested right now with just making it through this brutal last semester that I've signed myself up for, and I'll start thinking about my post graduation plans just as soon as I graduate.
Maybe I should just turn into this guy in this video. The song is "Desaparecido" by Manu Chao. The song has some fun lyrics about how people call him "the disappeared" and "when they look for me I'm not there and when they find me I'm not the one in front of them because I already ran off the other way." Hmm, that would be an interesting sentence for some semantic logic analysis...
Colorado is not only the nation's slimmest state, but apparently in some parts of Colorado, we also have the longest lifespans at 81.3 years! Although the state as a whole only ranks 12th for life-expectancy, 7 counties in Colorado are among the top ten counties in the USA with the longest expected lifespans, including the county where I sometimes claim to have grown up in. Go CO! Yes, Colorado is a pretty cool state. If you aren't from Colorado then you should be jealous.
In honor of that, today's video will be "Feelin' Good" by Muse. Where M.I.A. was my #1 big musical discovery of the summer, Muse was #2 only because I had actually heard of them before and so this was more of a "re-discovery". But I have been listening to them A LOT lately and I'm pretty sure they are my favorite rock-ish band ever now. They are especially good to listen to and to sing along with by yourself when you're driving in the car. Most of their videos are just as awesome as their songs and I have 9 Muse videos on youtube, all of which I would like to post here, but alas "Feelin' Good" seems so appropriate. Also, I like this video because I love the black and red colors. Someday if I ever have my own place, I think I want to decorate my room in colors like this. This song is less epic sounding than some of their other songs though, so I'll probably have to put up another Muse video or two in the future.
I've been thinking about how great it would be if there were a version of this song "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee where instead of "gasolina" they said something like, "quesadilla." Here's the video:
The chorus goes like this: Daddy Yankee: A ella le gusta la gasolina (She likes that gasoline) Girls: Dáme más gasolina (Give me more gasoline) Daddy Yankee: Como le encanta la gasolina (Oh how she loves that gasoline) Repeat
I think it would be a lot funnier if every "gasolina" were replaced with "quesadilla." But then I realized that there is actually a really long list of femenine nouns that would also work pretty well:
sopapilla: a delicious fried doughy dessert item.
hamburguesa: hamburger.
carne asada: roast beef.
papas fritas: french fries.
papas frias: cold potatos.
cocaína: cocaine.
frutas y verduras: fruits and vegetables.
casa blanca: white house.
aceituna: stuffed olive.
librería: bookstore.
salsa verde: green sauce.
mini-falda: mini-skirt.
zanahoria: carrot.
calabaza: pumpkin
and the list goes on and on and on...
What would be your preferred replacement?
In other news, I converted my bike to a fixed gear about two weeks ago and I LOVE IT! Not only does my bike look cooler/cleaner/sleeker, but it also weighs less and is in some ways actually easier to ride than before. In most situations you really don't need to use the brakes because pedal-braking is sufficient. You can really only brake as fast as you would normally be able to accelerate though (which is not very fast), so sometimes regular brakes are still necessary; so I think that anyone who has a fixie without a front brake is plain crazy. I think my favorite thing about the fixie coversion, however, is that the thing is practically silent going down the road. With no derailers to thread the chain through, it is just so quiet! It is a really neat sensation. Hopefully someday soon I'll get a picture of it post-conversion. I suppose the only downside to it is that it makes me feel more smug and superior to other cyclists when I pass them on my superior bicycle. That and steep hills are hard to get up.
What else? Well, classes are going well, work is okay... yeah, I guess that's it.
In some sort of McCarthyistic anti-communist era, Amanda got arrested for spreading communist propaganda door-to-door. I think Chewbacca got arrested too. Then I was gonna go help her get out of jail, but when I got to the jail to bust her out she was mad that I hadn't brought her any coffee and so she refused to let me bust her out. I think Chewbacca was there too, and I think he was trying to help convince Amanda not to worry about the coffee for now, so maybe he wasn't arrested in the first place after all... In the end I told her that she could just stay in jail if she really wants to, but to at least lock the door so strange people won't come and bother her.
I was riding in the back seat of Grant's car and Jess was in the front seat and we were driving really fast down some dirt roads at night and he was doing a bunch of really insane maneuvers with the car, like spins and flips and stuff. The whole time I was talking on the phone to his dad trying to figure out if it was THIS weekend that they were going to Philly, or NEXT weekend. Then Grant got all worried that if it was THIS weekend then he would miss "Italian Weekend." This realization made him drive a little slower. We didn't crash, and I didn't get nauseous.
I have such a long list of videos that I want to eventually put on here that it's hard to choose which one to actually post. A few months ago my sister had asked me for some more reccommendations of good music in Spanish, and I forgot to get back to her. So, today's video is a song in Spanish for the movie Take the Lead. I think this looks like a stupid movie, and this video is kind of dumb too, but I like the song (especially the part from 0:54 to 1:19).
After my miserable International Affairs senior seminar class (that's the last class that I had a suspicion I wouldn't like, and it turns out I was right. It sucks), I was hungry so I went up to Qdoba for a quesadilla (as if I don't make enough quesadillas myself at home). While I was there, a guy comes in and introduces himself to the manager saying that he owns the space next door and wanted to introduce himself. It turns out they're opening... are you ready for this?... a CEREAL BAR on the hill. They will offer all kinds of cereal, milk, toppings, extras, etc. and they will be open from 6am to 2am. When I heard him say this I couldn't help but turn around and listen intently. I don't eat as much cereal these days as I used to, but cereal still has a fond place in my heart.
I remember telling Amanda once a couple years ago that I thought it would be a great idea to open some sort of cereal restaurant and she told me that it was a stupid idea (actually, she probably said it was the stupidest idea she'd ever heard in her whole life). I told her that she was wrong, though. I told her that people would dig it. I would dig it.
So I'm glad to see that someone else has stollen my idea and is going to make it a reality. I hope they prove Amanda wrong. I hope they have a line out the door all day every day. And then one day I will make her go there with me for lunch or dinner or breakfast or something and she will see just how wrong she was.
For today's video, I have a video by M.I.A., who is probably my best/biggest musical discovery of the summer. I have to give my friend Natalie all the credit for turning me on to M.I.A. when I visited her in Phoenix earlier this summer. I don't think I like the video very much (too 1980's, even though it's only a couple years old), and this isn't necessarily my FAVORITE song of her's, but it will suffice. It is Bucky Done Gun.
I wish I could think of something interesting to blog about, but I can't. I started writing this whole long blog about how busy I am and such, but here's the much more concise version: I've been busy busy busy with school and work. There, that was easy.
Raissa and I took Dad to Cirque du Soleil: Delirium in Denver last thursday. It was, for lack of a better word, amazing. The last time I saw Cirque du Soleil I saw Varekai, also in Denver and it too was, for lack of a better word, amazing. While there were some common elements to both shows, they were also quite different from each other. They both have great music, great visual effects, and great acrobatic performances. This one, set inside the Pepsi Center, featured a large, long stage that went the length of the arena. It was set up in the center of the center and people sat on both sides of it. In front of the stage on each side was a retractable semi-opaque sheer fabric curtain onto which images were projected, but you could still see through it to the performers on the stage. It made for a real feast for the eyes. I think that whoever works on designing these shows must have about the coolest job in the world. Everything is just so creative and imaginative. If you have never been to a Cirque du Soleil show, you need to go to one. Tickets aren't cheap, but I think they are worth every penny.
